


pull my strings just for a thrill

by panaili



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-31
Updated: 2011-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-25 03:16:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panaili/pseuds/panaili
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt Hummel went missing on a rainy Saturday morning in April.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pull my strings just for a thrill

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story involves kidnapping, horror, and supernatural elements. Happy Halloween!

**  
_part i_   
**

_three days_

Kurt Hummel went missing on a rainy Saturday morning in April.

Three days later, Blaine is clutching a styrofoam coffee cup to his chest, nails digging rivets into the side as he sits anxiously in the uncomfortable waiting room at the police station. On the other side of the large room, he can see Burt Hummel deep in conversation with the lead detective, a pudgy balding man with hideous sideburns that Blaine just _knows_ Kurt would be mocking if he was there. The room isn’t as busy as it has been in the past few days; officers who have been working 'round the clock have been sent home, told to rest up and get back in when they have gotten some much needed sleep.

Everyone is still working, of course; still deep in papers and leads and _allegations_ , but mixed in with all the optimism is the undercurrent of hope dying. Blaine isn’t stupid; he knows that missing persons cases are best solved within the first forty-eight hours -- everyone who has ever seen cop shows on television knows that, and he had been an avid fan of _Bones_ and _Numb3rs_ when he was younger. As the minutes tick by slowly on the clock, he can’t help but feel as if he had been lied to by those fantastical dramas. His stomach twists with worry and fear and it feels like a struggle just to breathe, much less keep a steady head and heart full of encouragement.

It has been 67 hours since anyone has last seen Kurt, and 63 hours since Blaine has last spoken to him. He remembers hanging up the phone at 4:13 in the morning, sleep heavy in the corners of his eyes but unable to keep himself from grinning anyway. There were no classes on the weekends, no reason to be conserving his sleep, and there was something wonderfully satisfying about getting a call from your _boyfriend_ wanting some comfort. Even just thinking the term had made Blaine's heart feel lighter, and it’s clear they probably deserved all the rolling eyes and mockery that the Warblers sent their way.

He had gone back to sleep smiling, and was woken up again four hours later by a distressed Burt Hummel calling on Kurt's phone, asking, _is he with you? Please tell me he's with you._

Just remembering that moment makes Blaine want to throw up.

"Hey," a quiet voice says from above him, and Blaine looks up. Finn Hudson stands awkwardly in front of him, hands shoved into the pockets of his well-worn jacket. He looks oddly young, his expression still as open and shell-shocked as it had been the first day of Kurt's disappearance, though exhaustion seems to have sunk in by now. "Um. We were going to get food."

"Oh," Blaine says.

"Do you want to come?" asks Finn. "Or are they still--" he gestures awkwardly toward Burt and the old detective, "--you know, uh--"

"No," Blaine cuts him off, shaking his head minutely. "No. I'm, uh, cleared. I guess."

He isn’t, officially. The evidence is too circumstantial for them to arrest Blaine, and yet it all overwhelmingly paints him as a suspect. The first two days after Kurt's disappearance had been spent in a cold interrogation room, being glared at by a pair of cold-eyed detectives and asked questions like, _when did you start your relationship with Kurt Hummel_ and _why did he call you at four in the morning, Mr. Anderson?_

He had claimed innocence until it felt like the word had lost all meaning, tension bright in his eyes, but in the end, the only thing that Blaine has on his side is a sleepy-eyed Dalton security guard who says that he didn't _think_ anyone had left that morning, according to the logs. Blaine's roommate had been out of town for the weekend, visiting his family.

Blaine swallows his worries away, forcing himself to smile half-heartedly up at his boyfriend’s stepbrother. He nods and it feels like a chore. “Yeah,” he replies, quietly. “Yeah, I could eat something.”

Finn grins back at him, a facsimile of a normal exchange, and Blaine leaves his empty coffee cup on the floor as he follows Finn out of the room.

\--

 _two days_

The thing is, the evidence against Blaine is substantial.

“Do you know this area, Mr. Anderson?” asks the detective, a young black man with kind eyes that Blaine has silently labeled as _the good cop_. He slides a photo across the cold table and doesn’t look away from Blaine once.

Blaine glances down, sees the familiar trees surrounding a recently dug patch of earth, and he swallows.

“Yes,” he says, knowing where this line of questioning is sure to go. “It’s where Kurt and I buried his bird.”

“You buried his bird?” He rustles some papers around in a dark blue folder, and asks, “The bird you gave him?”

“Pavarotti. And the Warblers gave him the bird, not me,” Blaine corrects, looking nervously at the detective sitting across from him. The man’s expression is a blank slate, and Blaine hastens to add, “He died two weeks ago, and Kurt and I buried him in the woods. Kurt wanted to.”

“Did Mr. Hummel bring you to this area?”

Blaine can see the other detective in the room perk up at the question, her fine blonde eyebrows narrowing with interest.

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“No,” Blaine answers. “I brought him there. It’s close to Dalton, and I’d seen it from the highway a couple of times. It looked pretty.”

“It does look pretty,” the blonde detective says, leaning over the desk as though she was examining the picture, but really using the opportunity to direct a glare at Blaine. “Can you think of any reason why Mr. Hummel would go back there at approximately seven a.m. on Saturday morning?”

“No,” replies Blaine honestly, resisting the urge to avoid her sharp gaze.

“But you had just spoken with him.”

“Yeah, because he had a nightmare,” Blaine protests, and all the questions are starting to spin in his head. They have already covered the phone call, and the fact that Blaine was the last person to speak to Kurt before he apparently got up and drove fifty minutes to a deserted grove to visit his dead bird. The fact that Blaine hadn’t even thought of it – it had been _Finn_ , of all people, who thought that maybe Kurt just went to visit his bird’s grave – only made him look more guilty, like he was trying to keep people away from their shared locations.

“Does Mr. Hummel often call you about nightmares, Mr. Anderson?”

Blaine wants to shout at them, tell them that his name is _Kurt_ and Blaine didn’t _do_ anything to him, but he clenches his jaw instead, keeping his tone level.

“Not about _nightmares_ , usually, but he’s my boyfriend,” Blaine explains. “We call each other a lot, especially when he goes home for the weekend. No, he doesn’t normally call at four in the morning, but he was _scared_ and I comforted him, that’s it.”

“You sound stressed—” the blonde detective says, a sneer in her voice, and Blaine can see where her sentence is going. _You sound stressed, could it be because you’re lying? Because in reality, you asked Mr. Hummel to meet you in the woods so that you could--_

And Blaine can’t even complete the thought, he’s so terrified by the _possibility_ of what’s happening to Kurt, and he snaps.

“Of course I’m stressed!” he yells, shoulders tensing. He doesn’t jump up, doesn’t get in the detectives’ faces, but he’s practically vibrating in his chair from the desire to hit something. “My _boyfriend_ is _missing_ , and he’s been missing for _two days_ , and all you people are doing is asking me the same questions, over and over again! I didn’t kidnap my own boyfriend, and every second that you waste talking to me, the person who _did_ take him is _getting away_!”

The detectives eye him warily, though neither seems to soften in the wake of his outburst. The male detective sits back in his chair, jaw tightening, as the blonde one leans forward, her gaze somehow even sharper.

“Mr. Anderson, if you want us to get to the bottom of this,” she says, “you’ll answer all our questions and refrain from yelling.”

Blaine stares at her, feeling all the anger and resentment hardening in a shell around him, like all the energy he was running on was suddenly rendered useless, unable to sustain him. He feels cold inside. Numb.

“Now,” the nicer detective begins, clearly trying to smooth over the tension in the room with his soft voice, “Mr. Anderson. What _exactly_ did you and Mr. Hummel talk about?”

Part of him wants to cry, but Blaine isn’t even sure he’s allowed to anymore.

\--

 _before_

Blaine is actually kind of irritated when Kurt calls at four in the morning.

Not at first, of course. Initially, he is just confused, still deep in the grip of sleep as he grabs for his phone, answering it without really thinking about what he’s doing.

“Hello?” he mumbles, feeling like he’s talking from the bottom of a well. Distantly, he remembers his dream, something about moonlight and green, ice-cold eyes, and he shivers.

“Blaine?” Kurt says, his voice sounding quiet and strange, though it could just be Blaine’s exhaustion talking. “Oh, crap, I woke you up – of _course_ I woke you up, it’s so early, I can’t _believe_ I called you—”

The entire time Kurt’s talking, Blaine is sitting up in bed, blinking slowly in the dim half-light of the morning. At some point, he reasons, he’ll figure out what’s going on, but at the moment, it kind of feels like he’s still dreaming.

Finally, he interrupts Kurt’s rambling, only to groggily ask, “Kurt…?”

“Uh,” Kurt replies, and he laughs, sounding rather mortified. “Yeah, it’s me, but really, it’s nothing – I’m so sorry I woke you up, Blaine, I just – it’s stupid.”

Blaine can hear the silent plea for acknowledgement, even through his foggy awareness, and he bites back the small part of himself that wants to whine about being woken up. Instead, he yawns, rubbing at his eyes, and says, “No, it’s cool. What is it?”

“You’re going to laugh,” Kurt says, clearly embarrassed now. “Really, I shouldn’t have—”

“ _Kurt_ ,” Blaine warns lightly, falling back against the pillow. If he was more awake, he might add something like, _nothing you have to say would make me laugh_ or _you know you can call me anytime, dummy_ , but as it is, it’s hard enough to come up with coherent responses without trying to play the perfect boyfriend, so Blaine figures he’s allowed.

To Kurt’s credit, he stops trying to hedge around the issue. “I had a nightmare,” Kurt says. It’s the first time in the conversation that Kurt sounds more scared than self-conscious, and that alone is enough to shake the last vestiges of sleep from Blaine’s mind. “I just – I woke up really suddenly, and I just had to _call_ you, I had to make sure—”

“Hey,” Blaine says, and _there’s_ the soothing boyfriend voice that he was looking for. Kurt quiets immediately, and Blaine continues, “It’s totally fine for you to call me. What was your nightmare about?”

“It was really weird,” Kurt replies gamely, sounding so relieved that Blaine instantly forgives him for waking him up. “I was in a forest, and there were bells ringing everywhere, just getting louder and louder. And you were fighting with – I don’t even remember, just that it was something _horrible_ , and it was going to kill you, and I couldn’t move, because of the bells.”

“Because of the bells?” Blaine repeats, frowning.

“Yeah, I know, it’s ridiculous, right?” Kurt says, and Blaine takes it as a victory when he laughs, lightly, and it doesn’t sound scared. “But I was _convinced_ that the bells were going to hurt me somehow. And then, all of a sudden, the whole scene changed, and you were gone, and I was alone, standing in the middle of a circle of flowers. And then I woke up.”

“And called me,” adds Blaine.

“I might have freaked out a little,” Kurt allows, warming to Blaine’s teasing. “But in my defense, the last time I saw you in the dream, you were getting attacked by some evil demon creature, so I was _worried_.”

Blaine laughs lightly into the phone, feeling a rush of warmth run through him as Kurt mirrors his amusement. Now that the adrenaline is dying down, Blaine is slipping back into a pleasant, sleepy lull, and the sound of Kurt’s voice only adds to the overall milieu.

“Well,” Blaine replies, yawning again despite himself. “You don’t have to worry. I’m perfectly safe at Dalton. No demons here. Though I’m pretty sure Caecilian Hall is haunted.”

“Well, good thing you don’t live there,” Kurt says.

“Yeah, but Wes and Thad do,” Blaine reminds him. “I worry about them. All the time. It’s _awful_.”

“Okay, okay,” Kurt reprimands, snickering over the phone and sounding so much calmer than he had at the beginning of the conversation that Blaine smiles against the receiver. “I can tell when I’m being mocked. Can I call you later?”

“Of course,” agrees Blaine, already rolling on his side and settling back into his bed. “Talk to you later,” he murmurs.

“Bye,” Kurt says back, sounding warm and happy, and if Blaine had known it was the last time he’d hear that sound before the entire ordeal, he would never have hung up.

As it is, Blaine flips his phone shut and curls up under his comforter, smiling against his pillow.

\--

 _one day_

The trip to the grove is an exercise in constraint, and Blaine feels like he’s going to throw up the entire time.

It has been thirteen hours since anyone has heard from Kurt. Blaine drove down from Dalton the instant Mr. Hummel called, worried about his son. He spent the entire time convincing himself that he was going to arrive and Kurt was going to be standing there, rolling his eyes and saying something about how easily his dad worries, but hey, now that Blaine’s there, did he want to go shopping? It seemed like a much more practical and ordinary explanation than assuming that this was, in fact, a time to worry.

But then Blaine arrived, and Kurt’s car was missing, his father was on the phone with the police, and every hopeful thought Blaine had vanished in a wave of stomach-clenching fear.

He stares blankly as he drives, squinting through the heavy rain that threatens to run his car off the road. As he takes the exit to the gravesite, Blaine can’t help the dark sense of foreboding that wells up in the pit of his stomach, even though he tries to quell it. Because he doesn’t actually think Kurt is at the gravesite – he didn’t think it made sense when Finn first suggested it, and he still doesn’t, but with their options running out, Mr. Hummel was getting desperate for _some_ idea of where Kurt was, and so Blaine offered to take Finn and check it out.

And he doesn’t think that Kurt’s going to be there, but in the end, Kurt’s not answering his phone and there are only so many places he _could_ be, so Blaine is hoping despite himself that Kurt spontaneously decided to take a long, private picnic in the pouring rain at his dead bird’s grave. He can deal with a little weirdness if it means that he doesn’t have to think about what it would mean if they _can’t_ find Kurt.

Blaine’s heart nearly skips a beat when he turns onto the narrow road leading to the forest and Finn practically shrieks, “That’s his car!”

He barely remembers parking and clamoring out of the vehicle, all the while listening to Finn’s relieved exclamations, but the rush of excitement dies almost as quickly as it was born. It’s definitely Kurt’s car, but Kurt’s nowhere to be found. Even weirder, the door is hanging open, like Kurt had simply stepped out. The entire front section is soaking from the rain, and Blaine knows Kurt’s going to be _furious_ when he finds out.

The keys are still stuck in the ignition, switched onto battery power, and the car clock is frozen at 7:12. Eyeing the scene, Blaine feels a chill run down his spine that has absolutely nothing to do with the cold rain soaking through his shirt.

“Do you think he’s at the grave?” Finn asks, wiping a hand across his forehead in an effort to clear the rain away from his eyes. He looks earnestly hopeful at the idea, clearly still riding on the fact that they had found Kurt’s car, despite the circumstances surrounding the discovery.

Blaine stares back at him, biting back the bitterly sarcastic retort that he just _knows_ Kurt would approve of, and replies, “Let’s go check it out.”

They look all around the gravesite, but Kurt is nowhere to be found. The area itself is a meadow, really, and in the sunlight it was indeed very pretty, but in the pouring rain it mostly looks bedraggled. Blaine eyes the surrounding forest with suspicion, staring as far as he can through the thick trees until it all blurs into blackness, but there’s nothing to suggest that Kurt was ever here.

Finn notices him investigating, and he says, “No way, man. The woods are _way_ too muddy for Kurt. I don’t think he’d ever willingly go hiking.”

 _Exactly_ , Blaine thinks darkly, but he doesn’t say it. Finn’s clinging tightly to the hope that Kurt is just messing with them and Blaine doesn’t want to be the person who finally breaks him. Instead, Blaine says, “I think we should call his dad.”

Finn agrees, and for the next hour and a half, they wait while everyone slowly arrives. Even though Blaine knows that they probably shouldn’t mess with Kurt’s car, he and Finn dig through the back seat to find the pair of collapsible umbrellas that Blaine knows he keeps in there. The umbrellas come in useful as soon as the first few people show up, and Blaine and Finn can’t hide in the dry warmth of Blaine’s car anymore.

Apparently finding Kurt’s car is significant enough evidence for the police to get involved -- _finally_ , thinks Blaine irritably, even though he knows objectively that they have policies about cases like this – because shortly after Burt Hummel arrives with his new wife and Mercedes in tow, a pair of cop cars show up in a whirl of blue and red lights.

Blaine is standing off to the side, surrounded by Mercedes and a few other members of the McKinley Glee club that Finn had recruited to help in the search. He knows Rachel, but the other two – a strikingly pretty blonde and a dark-eyed muscular boy with a mohawk – he only vaguely recognizes from the inadvisable drinking party. They stand awkwardly together as the police talk intensely with Burt Hummel and his wife as Finn hovers anxiously behind them.

“Man,” the boy with the mohawk mutters, watching the scene with a concerned frown. Blaine thinks his name is Puck, based on what he remembers from Kurt’s stories, but even in his mind that name sounds ridiculous. “What the hell do you think happened?”

He directs the question to Mercedes, but he’s looking at Blaine over her shoulder with a weird sort of scrutiny. Abruptly, Blaine feels like he’s on the outside looking in, and he supposes it makes sense; everyone else knows Kurt from McKinley, and to a lot of them he must look like the boy who swooped in and stole him from their club to go compete with their rivals. Even after all of Kurt’s efforts to smooth over the situation, Blaine doesn’t really blame them for not really accepting him.

“This simply isn’t like Kurt at all,” Rachel answers instead, arms wrapped tightly around her chest. She’s sharing Blaine’s umbrella and is watching the entire police exchange with a worried yet fascinated expression. Blaine gets the distinct impression she’s taking performance notes in the back of her mind and hates her for it a little. Unaware of Blaine’s observation, she continues unabated, “He’s normally very responsible, and if he was _planning_ on missing our Barbara Streisand date, he would have let me know.”

“Maybe he decided that playing in the rain would be more engaging,” the blonde girl – _Quinn_ , Blaine suddenly recalls– replies dryly, clearly humoring her. Mercedes, sharing the same umbrella, gives her a half-grin.

“Kurt would _never_ miss a viewing of _Funny Girl_ ,” Rachel snaps back, looking so appalled at the suggestion that Blaine very nearly smiles before he remembers what they’re talking about.

“And he was going to go shopping with me after,” Mercedes offers, adding just enough emphasis to make it clear which option was more important. “He _definitely_ wouldn’t just skip out on that.”

“Didn’t you say you talked to him?” Puck asks Blaine, ignoring Rachel’s theatrics.

“Yeah,” Blaine murmurs, shrugging. “We didn’t talk about anything important, though.”

Puck narrows his eyes slightly, and Blaine can’t tell if he’s annoyed or confused, but he’s too busy paying attention to the cops to put much thought into the matter. The four police officers have apparently finished talking with Kurt’s family and are now conversing with each other by one of the squad cars. Every so often, one of them looks over at the small group of onlookers, and Blaine wonders if they are going to talk to them as well.

“What’d you guys talk about?” Puck continues.

Blaine can’t help the irritation that wells up at the nosy question – what does it _matter_ what he and Kurt talked about; it isn’t as though he just _forgot_ Kurt mentioning that, oh, right, he was planning on abandoning his car by the side of the road later that day –, but he manages to keep it from his voice when he replies, “He had a nightmare or something. We just talked until he was more awake, that’s all.”

“I’ve done that,” Rachel pipes in before Puck can make a face. “I called Finn once after I had the most _tragic_ nightmare about losing my voice the night before my audition for Broadway – for _Aida_ , no less, which my voice is just _perfect_ for – and I just needed to hear him say that it was all going to turn out fine. It was incredibly traumatic.”

Quinn gives Rachel a sidelong look, saying, “ _Wow_ ,” in the driest tone Blaine has ever heard. Rachel, her attention entirely on Puck, doesn’t seem to notice.

Now Puck definitely looks confused, and he glances over at Blaine, incredulously asking, “Hummel called you because he was freaking out about _Broadway_?”

Blaine sighs, exasperated, and corrects, “No, it wasn’t about – look, it was a legitimate nightmare, not a—”

Before he can finish explaining, a pair of police officers approaches the group with stony expressions on their faces. One of them, an older gentleman with a bit of a beer gut, steps forward and asks, “Blaine Anderson?”

“Yeah?” Blaine replies, automatically straightening his posture. Even though he knows they’re trying to help find Kurt, he can’t quite help the nervousness he feels in their presence.

“We’re going to need you to come to the station for questioning,” the portly cop informs him. His eyes and tone are cold, and that, if nothing else, sends alarm bells through Blaine’s mind.

Blaine blinks numbly. At his side, the other kids have fallen silent, and Blaine can feel them staring at him. After a moment of surprise, Blaine manages to say, “But… I’ve already told you what I know.”

“We have some more questions for you,” the officer replies coolly, expression remaining unchanged.

Burt Hummel and his wife walk up just then, huddled together under their umbrella, with Finn trailing behind them. Burt takes in the scene with a frown, briefly distracted from his concern about Kurt, and he asks, “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Hummel,” the other officer says, her no-nonsense expression warring with the warm comfort in her tone. “We’re just investigating all possible leads.”

“Mr. Anderson,” the lead officer repeats again, not taking his eyes off Blaine. “If you would come with us, please.”

It feels like all the air has rushed out of his lungs as Blaine realizes that the cops are looking at him with suspicion, like they think _he’s_ the one that—and he can’t even finish that thought, but clearly everyone else has, because Rachel is open-mouthed with shock, Mercedes is gaping, and even Quinn looks taken aback. Finn simply looks perplexed, like he isn’t quite sure how the cops got from point A to point C on this one, but Puck is frowning at Blaine like things are suddenly making sense.

Burt is the only one who honestly looks annoyed, and he immediately steps toward the older cop, snapping, “Hey, he _told_ you what he knows—”

His new wife grabs his arm, eyes darting anxiously between Blaine, the cops and her husband. Her jaw is set tightly, but her expression looks as shell-shocked as Finn’s.

Blaine still feels frozen with shock, but it shatters at the sound of Burt Hummel’s protective anger. He feels a rush of heat behind his eyes, and warmth spreads through his chest from the way Burt immediately assumes his innocence, unlike everyone else who seems to be staring at him like he’s some kind of surprise menace.

Unfortunately, the older cop doesn’t seem to be swayed by Burt’s confidence. He turns to face Kurt’s father, calmly saying, “Mr. Hummel, we are simply trying to follow all possible leads in an attempt to find your son. There is viable evidence tying Mr. Anderson to his disappearance, and we need him to come in for further questioning, that’s all.”

From the officer’s tone, Blaine can tell that there is definitely more to it, but his unruffled attitude makes Burt step back, his indignant anger faltering under his worry for his missing son. The officer nods sharply at him, and then turns back to Blaine, jaw set firmly.

“Mr. Anderson,” he repeats, bordering on annoyed. “If you would come with us, please.”

Blaine swallows, hating the way he feels guilty even though he’s _not_ , and he avoids looking at anyone as he nods jerkily, replying, “Y-yeah. Sure. Let’s go.”

He joins the younger officer under her black umbrella, following the pair to the nearest squad car. He can feel the eyes of Kurt’s family and friends dancing ominously across his back the entire way.

\--

 _three days_

“You should probably eat that before it gets cold, man,” Finn says through a mouthful of sandwich. He gestures to the meatball sub sitting between them, as though he thinks Blaine has forgotten it was there.

Blaine glances down at the food, grimacing at the way his stomach rolls. He knows the smell would normally be appetizing to him, but he hasn’t been able to eat much over the past few days. Now it feels like the aromas of powerful spices and sauce are conspiring to prompt his nausea.

“I’m fine,” Blaine mutters in response. He and Finn are sitting at one of the two-person tables in the restaurant, which even in his mood Blaine can admit is kind of amusing. Finn’s legs are so long they stretch out across the aisle, and he has to keep shuffling awkwardly in his seat every time someone passes by. Finn’s mother had been sitting at the table next to them at first, but had left to answer her cell phone shortly after they sat down. Blaine can see her standing under the awning outside, talking on her phone and staring listlessly at the rain that hasn’t stopped since the morning Kurt disappeared.

“Uh,” Finn says, and Blaine catches him nervously tearing at a napkin. He makes eye contact with Blaine, clearly uncomfortable, and looks down when Blaine raises his eyebrows. Before Blaine can call his actions into question, Finn abruptly says, “Hey, you know no one actually thinks you had anything to do with… y’know, Kurt disappearing and stuff, right?”

Blaine stares at him for a long moment before smiling bitterly and replying, “Except for the cops, you mean.”

“Burt thinks they’re full of shit,” Finn quotes at him, shrugging. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to hear that, but he’s been getting really pissed about it. They kept you in there _way_ too long.”

“Yeah,” Blaine murmurs. The last two days have faded into a blur of worry and yelling, so as much as he’d love to take pleasure in Finn’s validation, he just feels exhausted instead.

“I’m glad he finally called them out on you being a minor,” continues Finn, unabated. He’s switched to twisting his drinking straw now, bending it into a square and trying to make it stick together.

Blaine blinks. “Burt, you mean?”

“Yeah,” Finn informs him. “They couldn’t get in touch with your parents for so long—”

“Bad cell reception,” Blaine explains for them, feeling like a broken record. Finn looks mildly confused at the interruption, and Blaine feels obligated to add, “They do a lot of mission work. I think they’re in Nepal right now. They have satellite phones, but if there’s cloud cover…”

He trails off, gesturing with his hands to imply his meaning rather than finishing his sentence. Finn blinks, as though he doesn’t quite understand, but he nods anyway. “Yeah, well, Burt realized yesterday that they didn’t actually have permission from your parents to be questioning you, and he flipped shit. Still took him threatening to get a lawyer for them to release you, but they should leave you alone now.”

“Unless they come up with some trumped up evidence,” Blaine replies wryly. He’s focusing on stirring the ice in his soda around with his straw, not wanting Finn to see the way he’s tearing up at the news of Burt’s actions. He adds, “Then they can arrest me.”

“They don’t _have_ any evidence,” Finn insists, and he sounds so offended at the idea that Blaine grins despite himself. He can kind of see why Kurt had a crush on this guy before; Finn is gangly and awkward, and he sometimes says things that make Blaine wince, but he has an endearing smile and a strong sense of loyalty. He’s kind of like a giant puppy.

“No, really,” Finn adds, “They have nothing but that phone call and your sweater in Kurt’s car, and I even _told_ them that had been there for like, two weeks.”

“Thanks,” says Blaine.

Finn shrugs, glancing out the window. His mother seems to be finishing up her phone call and Finns picks up on that, shifting in his seat. “Oh,” he says, suddenly sounding awkward, “I was supposed to ask you. Do you, like, want to stay with us again tonight? Mom says you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.”

Blaine had stayed with Kurt’s family the night before, because by the time the police released him from holding it was nearly midnight. Blaine had been held for questioning for over thirty hours before Burt finally managed to get him released, and by that point, Blaine had been practically swaying on his feet. He had collapsed on their couch within five minutes of arriving and hadn’t moved for the next ten hours.

Part of him wants to accept Finn’s invitation. He feels sick with worry over Kurt, and the warm comfort of his family’s home makes Blaine want to cry with relief. But Blaine knows that surrounding himself with Kurt’s friends and family won’t help him deal with his fears; rather, the entire situation just makes him think back to the police station, facing hour after hour of endless questions from cold-eyed adults who seem to think he’s some kind of predator.

Blaine swallows, looking at his hands, and he replies, “Thanks, but I think I should, y’know, go back to Dalton. For tonight, at least – to get some supplies, take care of the class work I missed… stuff like that.”

Blaine counts himself lucky that Finn isn’t an overly perceptive type. He accepts Blaine’s explanation with a broad smile, saying, “Yeah, sounds good, dude.”

“You’ll call me if anything changes, right?” Blaine asks quietly, unable to keep the worry from his voice.

“Of course,” Finn says, his grin fading into a more somber expression. For a moment, Blaine can see his own nausea reflected in Finn’s eyes as the taller boy states, “I’ll call you right away.”

“Thanks,” is all Blaine can say. He manages a small smile before Finn’s mother returns to bring them back to the station, feeling moderately comforted in the knowledge that Finn’s just as torn up about Kurt’s disappearance as he is.

\--

 _three days_

When sleep comes, it is restless and twisted with dreams.

 _Green eyes are staring at him, gleaming._

 _There’s a flash of golden light, and a circle of flowers._

 _Kurt’s staring with wide eyes, terrified, as a mouth presses against his, red and hot and burning—_

 _And it flashes away to the grove where they buried Pavarotti, as a voice whispers from the darkness, “You shouldn’t offer what you can’t give.”_

Blaine wakes up with a start, gasping for air. He feels like he’s been choking.

When his eyes finally focus, stinging with tears as he fights to breathe normally, he can see that the red light of his alarm clock reads 12:04 a.m. From the sound of his unabated snoring, Blaine is fairly certain his roommate hasn’t noticed Blaine’s heavy breathing, and he latches onto the even pattern of Nic’s snoring to steady himself. It was just a nightmare. Just a nightmare.

Blaine blinks back the rush of tears burning in his eyes, curling his face into his pillow. He _really_ wants to call Kurt and make it go away, but his cell phone is lying motionlessly on his bedside stand and Blaine knows that nothing has changed. Kurt is still missing and he’ll never see his boyfriend again, and he’ll never be able to remember their last conversation together without thinking of the officers’ stony expressions and cold accusations.

Blaine stifles a sob, trying to hold it together, but it’s midnight and he’s cold and scared, and his boyfriend is missing. He kind of thinks he deserves at least one freakout about the whole matter.

Which is really the only explanation Blaine has for what happens next.

He doesn’t know where he gets the idea, but suddenly Blaine finds himself dressing in the dark, pulling on an old pair of blue jeans and a forest green pullover. He grabs his wallet and cell phone without thinking and rushes out the door, sneaking out of the dorms with ease. Some part of him thinks that it really shouldn’t be this simple, but Blaine ignores it. He just knows he needs to leave.

It isn’t until he’s already on the road that Blaine realizes he’s heading to the gravesite. He nearly turns around the instant he figures it out, mortified at his own subconscious – why on earth would he want to revisit the place where Kurt vanished? What is _wrong_ with him? – but instead he grits his teeth and continues driving. The closer he gets, the more intense he feels about it – he _has_ to get there. It’s _important._

That’s what Blaine keeps telling himself as he parks, turning off the headlights and climbing out of his car. The rain has finally stopped, leaving the ground sodden with puddles. The air smells like worms and Blaine wrinkles his nose as he steps down from his vehicle and shuts the door.

The slamming sound snaps him out of his reverie, and Blaine is suddenly actively aware of what he’s doing. He’s standing beside his car in the dark, staring at the forest in front of him. In the moonlight, he can make out the orange police tape still outlining the area around Kurt’s car, giving the entire scene an eerie feel. Despite the past few days of rain, there isn’t any wind; the entire forest seems frozen in time.

Blaine’s chest feels tight, like he’s about to panic. What is he _doing_ here? Oh, god, if the police catch him here, it’ll just make him look guilty – they’ll probably say something about him _returning to the scene of the crime_ and slap cuffs on him, and everyone will really think he’s guilty this time.

Why did he come here?

Blaine can’t even remember. It’s such a stupid idea.

He shakes his head, running his hands through his curly hair. He feels like there’s electricity running through his limbs, keeping him pinned in place beside his car, even though all he wants to do is climb back in and go back to Dalton. But he can’t help but stare at the forest, hoping despite himself that maybe, just _maybe_ , Kurt would come walking out, smiling and throwing out some kind of crazy excuse for his absence.

It doesn’t happen.

But Blaine does see a light.

It’s just a little thing, like a firefly in the middle of a bush, but it looks bright and out of place in the dark. Blaine frowns, trying to stare into the forest beyond the meadow, and the light flashes again, a little more urgently.

For a moment, Blaine freezes in confusion, unable to comprehend the sudden brightness in the dark, but then he thinks, _it could be Kurt_ , and he abruptly runs in the direction of the flash, almost stumbling in his effort to follow the sight. He pictures Kurt with a flashlight, clicking it on and off, and yes, maybe it’s far-fetched to think that Kurt would conveniently be back in the forest when Blaine happened to show up, but Blaine doesn't _care_ ; he just want his boyfriend _back_ , already.

Blaine worries briefly that he’ll lose sight of the light, but every ten steps or so it flashes again, and Blaine follows the brightness like a moth. After a minute of running, Blaine suddenly realizes that the light seems to be _moving_ \-- every time he feels like he’s getting closer, it backs off, leading him further and further into the forest.

He pauses for a moment, taking a deep breath. From his position, he can just barely see the road behind him, shining gray in the moonlight. The light in the woods flashes more urgently, as though it senses his hesitation, and Blaine feels the slow curl of suspicion twist sinuously in his stomach. Suddenly, Blaine wonders if this is exactly what happened to Kurt – if he saw the lights and was too curious to turn back until it was too late.

How stupid would it make him, Blaine thinks; if he considers that possibility and follows the lights regardless?

The light begins to fade threateningly, and Blaine makes a snap decision, trotting forward after the sight before he can think about it. He curses himself even as he moves through the brush, but he can’t just _leave_ , not now – not when he might be able to figure out what happened to Kurt. Blaine keeps picturing Kurt trapped somewhere, waiting for him, and even though all his instincts are screaming at him to run away, Blaine can’t help but think that this might be his last chance to save him.

 _Or maybe we’ll both be trapped_ , his mind supplies unhelpfully, but Blaine sets his jaw against the thought.

At least then they’d be together.

It feels like forever before Blaine emerges in a small grove, which is horribly overgrown with plants. The trees frame the open area in a tight circle, but somehow the branches don’t block out the moonlight, which lights up the center of the meadow in a pale glow. Wild flowers form a ring around the area at the base of the trees, looking like blue and purple bruises against the grass.

More importantly, Blaine sees Kurt kneeling in the center of a ring of yellow flowers, eyes closed. His hands are lying limply in front of him, pinned together by a honest-to-goodness set of golden shackles, and the chain to those cuffs is wrapped twice around his torso.

Standing in the shadows behind him is a dark figure whose green eyes burn unnaturally bright as they stare across the grove at Blaine.

 

 **  
_end part i_   
**


End file.
